The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada Revises The CanMEDS Physician Competency Framework To Prioritize Woke Politics Over Medical Competency

Don't get sick in Canada after 2025.  The upcoming 2025 edition CanMEDS Physician Competency Framework will 'center' anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice requirements for doctors; while diminishing requirements for any medical expertise.  The Canadian health care bureaucracy feels comfortable abandoning the primary rationale for medical care because medical malpractice liability lawsuits are almost impossible to win in the rigged Canadian legal system.  Less than 1% of Canadian medical malpractice claims were won by patients at trial and more than 50% of claims were abandoned in 2019:

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/michael-higgins-anti-racist-doctors-would-put-social-justice-above-medical-expertise

'Anti-racist' doctors would put social justice above medical expertise
New proposal would centre Canada's framework for physician training around 'anti-oppression'
By Michael Higgins - November 27, 2023

A working group under the auspices of the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada believes training future doctors should concentrate more on social justice and anti-racism than “medical expertise.”

The idea was proposed by an anti-racism expert working group as a potential addition to CanMEDS, the framework for physician training slated for renewal in 2025. If implemented, it would elevate what is increasingly a destructive, divisive Marxist ideology over the Enlightenment ideals of science and reason.

As Dr. David Jacobs, president of the Ontario Association of Radiologists, tweeted so succinctly of the idea, “This is bonkers.”

CanMEDS is implemented throughout Canada by a consortium that includes the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, the College of Family Physicians of Canada, the Canadian Medical Association, the Medical Council of Canada and the Quebec College of Physicians, among others.

In its report, the anti-racism working group says it believes the 2025 framework for training future physicians “affords us the opportunity to think critically and propose a vision for the practice of medicine which is rooted in social justice, anti-racism, anti-oppression and cultural safety, promoting a broader cultural shift which is necessary for the profession.”

The medical profession and health system commit “structural violence” against marginalized people, according to the anti-racism working group’s report. Its authors proposed a disturbing social justice solution within the health system.

“A new model of CanMEDS would seek to centre values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism and social justice, rather than medical expertise,” it said.

One section of the report, titled “De-centering medical expertise,” called for a shift away from medical expertise to values such as anti-racism, anti-oppression, shared humanity and the ever more ubiquitous concept of decolonization.

The new system envisioned by the working group “would prioritize bidirectional relationships with patients, providers, communities, the land, the health system and society at large rather than the individual physician as a gatekeeper of professionalized knowledge. With this new model, we can reflect a stance of humility over hubris.”

How does one prioritize a bidirectional relationship with the land?

Regardless, the “humility over hubris” line signals the virtue of the caring and compassionate working group over all those haughty, prideful colleagues.

The report also included a section calling for recognition that the present had been impacted by historical power structures such as “white supremacy, heteropatriarchy and capitalism.”

In a statement to the National Post Sunday, Jacobs noted that most doctors were too busy to worry about the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) agenda.

“In daily practice, (DEI) is barely given a nod. We are overwhelmed by the volume of patients that need care on a daily basis,” he said in his statement. “Our work has bled into our evenings and weekends leaving very little time to think about what seems to be both a political and academic exercise. You can imagine the chaos that would ensue if patients were queued based on perceived oppression as opposed to the acuity of their medical condition.”

DEI is trying to change medicine from a discipline that cares for patients to one that champions social justice causes, Jacobs added.

“The vast majority of physicians have entered the field in order to care for others,” he continued. “There is an abundance of empathy and kindness among my colleagues. (DEI) has tried to piggyback on these noble traits and impose a social justice agenda that is driven by only a handful of activist physicians.”

Jacobs said DEI was a divisive ideology that painted people as either victims or oppressors in order to rebalance power which focuses on “social justice and equity of outcomes as opposed to empathy and excellence of outcomes.”

Before DEI, the goal in training doctors was to be kind and competent, but with DEI, doctors are also being “tested for ‘purity of thought.’”

The DEI movement has now infected most of Canada’s universities, government institutions and schools.

Should anyone stand up to this “progressive” movement the results can be devastating. During one DEI training session in 2021, Toronto school principal Richard Bilkszto spoke out against an instructor’s claims that Canada was more racist than the United States. He experienced bullying and required medical leave as a result.

Earlier this year, Bilkszto took his own life.

The danger of a small group of activists controlling what people should or shouldn’t think is not lost on Jacobs.

“Beyond the obvious worrisome impact on patients, there is also an impact on physicians’ freedom of expression and thought,” he said in his statement. “(DEI) is governed and policed by a small unelected and unaccountable group that is using the authority of universities and medical governing bodies to establish what is acceptable and what is unacceptable thought.”

Medicine should return to embracing respect and partnership with patients, Jacobs said, and “strongly reject those who would try to weave their political and social agenda into the doctor-patient relationship.”

The halls of academia appear to have long fallen to the charlatans of DEI, but if the medical establishment has also succumbed then we are all in for a taste of bad medicine.

Wonder if a rash of botched physician-assisted suicides will encourage the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons to recenter medical competence in CanMEDS?